Shuttle Astronauts Eager for Risky Mission to Hubble (STS-125, Atlantis to launch in early Oct.)

Space.com on Yahoo ^ | 8/12/08 | Tariq Malik

[NormsRevenge]

Seven NASA astronauts are eagerly looking forward to a risky, but pivotal, shuttle flight to the Hubble Space Telescope this fall.

Veteran shuttle commander Scott Altman and his crew are preparing to launch in early October aboard the Atlantis orbiter on what is expected to be NASA's final service call on the iconic space observatory. The telescope passed its 100,000th orbit around Earth on Monday.

"What we want to do, though, is refurbish the Hubble so that it can operate as long as possible," Altman said during a series of NASA interviews released on Monday. "We're going to add some new instruments ... and then we're going to go in and kind of do internal surgery on some instruments that are already in the telescope."

--snip--

But their mission is not without risk. Unlike all of NASA's shuttle missions since the 2003 Columbia tragedy, Atlantis is not headed for the International Space Station, where astronauts can take refuge and await rescue if their shuttle's heat shield is critically damaged.

The Hubble telescope circles the Earth in a higher orbit and different inclination than the space station, so Atlantis astronauts will not be able to reach the orbital laboratory if the shuttle is damaged.

Instead, NASA is priming a second space shuttle, Atlantis's sister ship Endeavour, and a four-astronaut crew for a rescue mission that the agency hopes it will never need. Altman and his crew will carry 25 days' worth extra of food and other supplies along with Hubble's new instruments as a precaution in case they should need an orbital rescue.

Under the plan, Endeavour would rendezvous with Atlantis within a 25-day window, grapple the orbiter with its robotic arm, and then astronauts would stage a series of spacewalks to transfer from the stricken ship. ...

[NormsRevenge]

Hubble Servicing Mission 4

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/hst_sm4/index.html

[NormsRevenge]

STS-125: The Final Visit

Mission Overview

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/hst_sm4/overview.html

[NormsRevenge]

Hubble Unveils Colorful and Turbulent Star-Birth Region on 100,000th Orbit Milestone
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2060942/posts

[mylife]

If I had the opportunity to do this, I would in a NY minute.

[mylife]

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/070705_seti_sofia.html

[NormsRevenge]

http://hubblesite.org/

HubbleSite is the home of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the renowned orbiting telescope whose discoveries have forever altered our knowledge of the universe.

[Solitar]

In some ways it would be fitting to leave Atlantis in orbit as a permanent memorial and monument to America’s shuttle fleet and space program. It would be like the artifacts Americans left on the Moon — memorials which testify to what America accomplished. For all we know it may be decades or centuries before humans go back into space as we had dreamed — and did once upon a time.

[MikeD]

It’s no riskier than the Hubble deployment mission, or the four previous servicing missions. People wonder why I hate the drive-by media...